Analyzing
Real-Life Examples of Top Ranking Sites
By
Robin Nobles
Have
you ever wondered how top ranking sites are spending their advertising
dollars? Do they advertise offline? Do they outsource their SE positioning
work, or do they optimize their own sites in-house? What are they doing
to increase the visibility and popularity of their sites?
For
this article, I chose two highly competitive keyphrases and one moderately
competitive keyword and then contacted three companies
who are having success in getting their sites ranked at or near the
top and asked them a series of questions.
The
two competitive keyphrases:
? homes for sale
? used cars
The
moderately competitive keyword:
? shortwave -- (as
in shortwave radios)
Of
course, the examples used in this article reflect the positioning of these
sites at the time of writing. Naturally they are bound to fluctuate
up and down in the listings. Even so, you'll likely find them placed closely
to where their positioning is described below. And, regardless of where
they're positioned at the time you happen to read this article, the examples
and the analysis remain strategically valid.
First
Example . . .
Keyword phrase: homes for sale Site:
HarmonHomes.com (http://www.harmonhomes.com)
HarmonHomes.com boasts the following top 10 rankings for the
keyword phrase, homes for sale:
? #1 in AltaVista
? #3 in Google
? #4 in Fast/All the Web
? #7 in Lycos
? #3 in Yahoo! Web Pages
? #4 in pure Inktomi results (http://169.207.238.189/search/)
It's
important to note that HarmonHomes.com is owned by Trader Publishing Company
out of Norfolk, Virginia, which also owns several other large Web sites,
such as CareerWeb.com, ForRent.com, Parenthood.com, and Roomsaver.com. Erin
Cullipher, Marketing Manager of HarmonHomes.com, gave a quick summary of
the site:
" Headquartered
in Virginia Beach, Va., HarmonHomes.com is a leading provider of
online real estate classified ads. As a division of Trader Publishing
Company
and part of the family of Trader Web sites, HarmonHomes.com provides
a comprehensive homes- for-sale database for home buyers while serving
as a convenient and effective advertising forum for real estate professionals. "
According
to Erin, Trader has a complete Web development team that is responsible
for each of their domains, with the exception of Roomsaver. It's
also important to note that the main page of HarmonHomes.com is a straight
HTML page. However, most of the interior pages, since they are a classified
ad site, are database delivered.
Erin answered the following interview
questions:
Question: Do
you do anything special to boost your site's link popularity?
Erin: We
are lucky to have a strong, built-in system of links due to our company's
network of highly trafficked sites. We have links to HarmonHomes.com
on all sites within the network and we, in return, link to all of them
as well. In addition, we have agreements with two companies who provide
Web sites for real estate agents. To offer a national real estate listings
database to the mostly local visitors to these agents' sites, our link
is typically placed under a "Search Homes Nationally" button.
In addition, we are pursuing a links page and reciprocal links program
with businesses affiliated with residential real estate.
Question: How
do you spend your advertising dollars for your Web site?
Erin: Our
online business is somewhat unique in that we have two target markets:
we sell our advertising products to real estate professionals in order
to serve home buyers. So, while we market our products to agents,
we also have to drive consumer traffic to the site to satisfy our agent
clients and further build our business. As far as our trade advertising
efforts, we concentrate our dollars and efforts in the following areas:
trade shows, email marketing, print ads, direct mail and online ads. To
attract consumers to the site, we concentrate on the following areas:
SEO, home show sponsorships and email marketing. To reach both of these
markets, we also place our URL on the front cover of every issue of Harmon
Homes magazine (78 million issues
annually) and advertise the site in the publication. We
also conduct intensive media efforts nationally. Both of these initiatives
are high impact and relatively low cost, if not free.
Question: Do
you purchase keywords from the pay engines like Overture? If so, approximately
how much do you spend each month on Overture advertising?
Erin: Yes,
we feel that pay engines are integral to our SEO efforts, especially here
in the beginning when we're trying to establish a strong Web presence. We
do have an account with Overture. We spend less than $300 on Overture
and other PFP engines.
Question: How
much actual search engine optimization work do you do on the site?
Erin: Optimization
is done on an almost daily basis. In order to serve our customers, the
site changes daily. Being graphically heavy and with most of
our pages being dynamically generated, we have worked to increase the
amount of text on our pages. We have paid special attention to relevancy
factors by maximizing keywords and phrases.
Question: Are
you using cloaking technology on your site?
Erin: No,
we do not use any cloaking technology. Our pages are submitted
to search engines manually with no doorway pages, agent name or IP delivery.
Question: Do
you hire a professional SEO or outsource your SEO work, or do you do
the search engine work yourself?
Erin: We
have a full-time Web Promotions Specialist who handles SEO for HarmonHomes.com,
in addition to three other Trader-owned sites. She has a Web
development background and conducts extensive research on SEO topics.
Even with a full-time person allocated to these efforts and significant
strides made already in SEO, we realize that we still have a lot to learn
and a lot of work to do.
Question: Do
you check your rankings periodically?
Erin: While
we formally check our search engine rankings weekly based on our keywords, we
also informally spot check our rankings throughout each day. We also check
random words and phrases periodically to see if there are 'quirk' areas
from which we are gaining traffic.
Question: Do
you monitor your traffic? Do you analyze your traffic and use that knowledge
to strengthen your site?
Erin: Yes,
we do monitor our traffic. Since we are a data-driven site, we
are working very hard to increase and improve our listings. With that,
the user experience will improve, traffic will grow and the hard work
we do in the area of SEO will pay off even more. We analyze traffic weekly
and use the information to improve our placement in search engines.
Analysis of Harmon Homes
Remember
that rule
number one
regarding
site optimization
is: never
mess with
success!
That said,
there are
some interesting
observations
worth mentioning
regarding
this site.
* Noteworthy is the fact the keyword phrase -- homes for sale -- does not appear
in the main page's title, description, or keyword tags. However, the keyphrase
Houses for sale does appear.
This
apparent oversight actually lends itself as evidence that the appearance
of the keyword home in incoming links that point to the Harmonhomes.com
site is a more important factor that having the keyword in the title, at
least on some engines.
By
the way, we've determined this by checking LinkPopularity at http://www.linkpopularitycheck.com/ where
our search revealed the following results for HarmonHomes.com:
?
AltaVista: 23,630 incoming links
? HotBot: 3,500 incoming links
? MSN Search: 5,221 incoming links
? Lycos: 1,007 incoming links
Impressive! And
our research revealed that every single link on every linking page that
we happened to spot-check had the keyword homes somewhere in the link. This
fact builds an overwhelmingly strong case that incoming links that
include your keywords are critical to high relevancy scores. In many cases
ONLY
the single keyword "Homes" was used to link to the Harmonhomes.com
site
*
By taking into account that "Houses for sale" DOES
appear in the title, and that there is slightly less competition for
the "houses for sale" keyphrase, coupled with the finding
that Harmonhomes.com is listed way down at position #20 for houses
for sales, we could further conclude that keywords in the incoming links
are MORE important that keyword(s) in the title.
* Having the keyword "homes" built
into the URL is a smart strategy. We found many of the incoming links
listed as Harmon Homes -- which certainly gets the keyword homes into
the incoming link.
*
The fact that HarmonHomes.com is a "theme-related" site
with only a single minded focus -- homes for sale -- should also
be considered a crucial element of its successful SEO model.
Now, let's look at another top ranking site.
Keyword phrase: used cars
Site: Used Cars Online - http://www.ausedcar.com
Used Cars Online boasts the following top ten
rankings...
?
#1 in Yahoo! Web Sites (directory)
? #1 in AltaVista
? #3 in Lycos
? #3 in pure Inktomi results
? #8 in Google
Used
Cars Online is just what the domain name suggests: a Web site devoted
to buying and selling used cars. Phil Anderson is one of the
site's Webmasters and he's in charge of the search engine marketing
aspects of the site. Phil was good enough to answer the following interview
questions:
Question: Do
you do anything special to boost your site's link popularity?
Phil: We
just ensure that we are on every search engine, and we work with several
affiliates in sort of a link exchange. We are also linked to
or bookmarked by several hundred Web sites.
Question: How
much business do you get from your Web site?
Phil: We
look for a 2% sales rate based on the number of people that view our site
and make it as far as the sales page. (Most
of our money is made by people placing ads). We usually
make this 2% quota.
Question: Do
you purchase keywords from the pay engines like Overture?
Phil: No,
we are listed high enough on enough major search engines that we don't
feel it's justified to pay for keyword search engines. Incidentally,
we still end up on some of them any way.
Question: How
much actual search engine optimization work do you do on the site?
Phil: This
was one of the things we spend the most time on. Having a small
advertising budget when we first started out, this was a crucial way
of 'getting the word out.' We have directly correlated most of our success
to Yahoo, even though we are on many other search engines. Our biggest
obstacle is Yahoo continually shifting its index in the search for
'used
cars.' We also worked a long time on our META tags, which are vital
for a good position on most other search engines. In fact, we have noticed
several competitors that directly copied both our tags and our wording,
and they indeed get placed right with us on the search engines.
Question: Do
you use cloaking technology on the site?
Phil: I'm
not sure what you mean by cloaking technology, so I suppose the answer
is no.
Question: How
do you spend your advertising dollars for your Web site?
Phil: Most
of our advertising is done through newspapers and trade magazines, as
this is where people would look when they are going to buy or sell
a used car. We also use a good amount of signage in the Baltimore/DC area
where
we are based. Also, there are many sources of free advertising on the
Internet.
Question: Do
you check your rankings periodically?
Phil: Yes,
as this is vital for our income.
Question: Do
you monitor your traffic? How much traffic do you get to the
site (user sessions)?
Do you analyze your traffic and use that knowledge to strengthen your
site?
Phil: We
do indeed monitor our traffic; however, we do not give out our actual
numbers. Traffic is analyzed to determine the best way to attack
any future advertising/search engine placement.
Question: Do
you have a search engine marketing person on staff, or do you hire an
outsource company?
Phil: I
am in charge of this, and if you'll notice, we are not just top at Google,
we are also at the top in almost every major search engine. There are
some inside secrets to getting these positions, but I think the number
one thing
is longevity ...we have been around since 1996 which is ancient in
the Internet world.
Question: How
important do you consider search engine marketing to be in the success
of a Web site?
Phil: Extremely
important if you don't pay for national TV or banner advertising. It's
the only way besides word of mouth to get hits. We started out with
around 100 hits a day in December of '96. Then in January '97, Yahoo!
put us
at the top and our hits increased ten fold.
Question: How
large is your Web site?
Phil: As
far as number of pages, there are few for the actual site (maybe
10-15), but if you include the car ads themselves as pages,
then there are hundreds.
Analysis
of Used Cars OnLine
Again, incoming keyword links are the main ingredient
contributing to the high ranking of this site.
Our search on LinkPopularityCheck.com, revealed the following numbers of incoming
links...
?
Lycos: 855
? AltaVista: 575
? MSN: 120
? HotBot: 87
*
Most interesting is the fact that Used Cars On-Line
was consistently THE keyword link used in every case we spot-checked.
Obviously, Phil or someone within the company suggested, precisely
HOW their site's descriptive link should be listed. The success they've
enjoyed as a result of this focused strategy is the payoff.
*
In addition, it should be noted that the biggest link
relevancy gorilla on the block, Yahoo, rated the site #1 for their
target keyword phrase. This alone significantly enhances the site's
relevancy
because a Yahoo link is given much more relevancy weight than virtually
any other site on the net.
*
Worth noting is the fact that on the home page the title
and description tags begin with the keyword phrase. Generally speaking,
this strategy will always help, and will never hurt, a site's relevancy.
*
Another boost, especially on Yahoo, is attributable
to the fact the keyword phrase is present within the URL.
*
Another factor that can only help and will never hurt
is that the target keyphrase appears in the company name itself.
*
Notice that the keyword phrase is only used once in
the visible body text; evidence that repeating a keyword phrase within
the text of a page isn't as effective as some webmasters believe
it to be.
*
As with almost all high scoring sites, the focus is
on one topic, or theme, only! ...and that theme is buying and selling
used vehicles.
As
Phil pointed out, the site has been around for a long
time. Although he attributes a large portion of their success to "longevity," we
suspect it's more attributable to the link popularity that blossoms
from a strategic campaign focused on gaining incoming links. Such a
strategy, of course, takes time to build resulting in erroneous reports
that "longevity" is responsible for success when in fact it
is the accumulation of incoming links over time that becomes the
actual key factor. And, when links like Yahoo add a major degree of
relevancy,
site positioning can suddenly improve significantly and traffic can
increase, as Phil noted, "ten fold" overnight.
Our
next example site is an online store that sells shortwave
radios and accessories -- a category we'd consider to be only moderately
competitive. This classification reflects, perhaps, a more middle-of-the-road
analysis that would be typically applicable to the average retail
store doing business online.
Keyword:
shortwave Site: The Shortwave Store - http://www.shortwavestore.com
Let's look at the site's top 10 rankings for the keyword,
shortwave.
?
#6 and #7 in AltaVista
? #7 in Google
? #2 in About.com Sprinks
? #1 in AOL Web Sites
? #2 in Netscape
For
this article, I interviewed Keith Carcasole, owner of The Shortwave Store.
Question: Do
you do anything special to boost your site's link popularity?
Keith: I
used to ask for reciprocal links. However, there doesn't seem
to be enough time in the day for that any more. Now I carefully choose
popular non-commercial sites where I can inexpensively advertise via
a small text link. It is rumored that some search engines take the quality
and popularity of the sites linking to you into consideration when
determining
the ranking of your site.
Recently
I purchased a popular domain (http://www.worldtimezones.com) and
paid to have the Web site designed. It is dedicated to time zones of
the world. This handy site is great for travelers, business people and
those
interested in world politics. These are the same people who might be
interested in purchasing a shortwave radio to pick up world news and to
listen to free
speech stations! Not only do I get to advertise there for free, but
I get a quality link that will help increase the popularity of my shortwave
site. In some ways, this is actually better than a doorway page because
people are visiting the site for another reason. This exposes my site
to customers who may not visit otherwise.
I
highly recommend this technique to anyone who has time to develop
a popular site that offers a service that may be of interest to potential
customers but at the same time has nothing to do with the subject matter
of your main site.
Question: How
much business do you get from your Web site?
Keith: It
has been extremely difficult for us to gauge how much business we get
from the net because we still have customers who refuse to do
business online. This is especially true around Christmas time when
people want reassurance that the item that they are about to order is
not out
of stock and will arrive in time for Christmas. If forced to venture
a guess, I would estimate that 80% of our total business from our shortwave
division comes from the net, either by phone order or by secure online
order. It appears that the remainder comes from radio ads and referrals
from friends.
Question: Do
you purchase keywords from the pay engines like Overture? If
so, approximately how much do you spend each month on Overture advertising?
Keith: We
buy keywords on a number of pay-per-click engines. We are currently
paying about $125 per month to Overture. The sum of the rest probably
totals $25 per month.
Question: If
you feel comfortable with this question, I'd like to know if you're
using cloaking technology on the site.
Keith: None
of our sites use cloaking at this time. I plan to use cloaking
on one of our other sites in the very near future. We are not doing
this to 'fool' the search engines. When we change technology on our site,
we
will lose many of our high-ranking positions. I plan to keep our old
pages cloaked so that we do not lose traffic.
Question: How
do you promote your Web site offline?
Keith: Business
cards, print ads in magazines and newspapers, radio ads, and
when customers call our store we often direct them to the site.
Question: Do
you purchase banner ads?
Keith: Not
really, however this does not mean that I don't have banner ads.
1. I do advertise via FREE
banner ads on my own sites. If you own
another high traffic site (related or not), there is no
harm in advertising your products there. Even if you create
a site just for your banner, the CPM will still be a fraction
of what it would cost to buy impressions elsewhere.
2. I have purchased tile ads and
convinced the webmaster to switch me to small text ads for the same
price. I find that this yields a higher click-through ratio.
3.
Some pay-per-click
search engines give
you free banner
impressions
for your top
positions,
I believe.
Question: Do
you monitor your traffic?
Keith: I
seldom look at our stats any more. If the orders were to suddenly
stop, I would take a closer look. When I look at our stats my main
focus is the referrers rather than the volume of traffic.
Question: Do
you analyze your traffic and use that knowledge to strengthen your site?
Keith: I
like watching where our traffic is coming from. Every few months
I calculate how many visitors it takes to generate one sale just to
make sure we are getting a reasonable return on our advertising dollars.
I
use this to adjust our advertising campaigns rather than to strengthen
our site.
Question: How
much traffic do you get to the site (user
sessions)?
Keith: So
far this month...(on the
21st day of November): The Web site received 22,945 visits.
A typical visitor examined 8.81 documents before leaving the site.
A typical visit lasted for 1.25 minutes. The longest visit lasted for
79 minutes.
Visitors came from 9,150 distinct Internet addresses. Please note that
we expect to 'spike' in December.
Question: How
large is your Web site?
Keith: Here's
proof that size doesn't matter. Our site is only 33 MB including
all images, cgi-bin, and downloads.
Question: Do
you have a search engine marketing person on staff or do you hire an
outsource company?
Keith: No
one on staff is dedicated to this job. What little work we do
is done internally. I get to it when I get to it. If something important
comes up, I'll do a little work. Our positions on the search engines
are not carefully monitored any more. I think it is important to watch
it in
the beginning. Make sure the site is fully functional first. Make sure
you are competitive and then dedicate some real time to positioning.
If you do it right once, you will only have to touch things up from time
to time.
Question: How
important do you consider search engine marketing to be in the success
of a Web site?
Keith: We
would not be here without it. Just because we don't watch our
positions every day doesn't mean it's not important to us. We know
we're doing well and we can tell by the number of orders we receive every
day that
everything is working.
Analysis
of The Shortwave Store
This example is a good one because it
typifies a fairly common approach that many online businesses
take in regards to their commercial Internet presence.
As Keith noted, he did his search engine optimization
work in the beginning and initially spent time soliciting
reciprocal links in general and then (rightly) shifted
focus to securing incoming links from high quality and
popular sites.
Based on his answers, one gets the feel that he is currently
letting his strategy ride and tends to check his positioning
on an as-needed basis. He uses his
sales activity as an indicator of whether or not his SEO efforts are in need
of a booster shot. In checking his LinkPopularity we find the following
numbers of incoming links...
?
157 in AltaVista
? 108 in Lycos
? 97 in MSN
? 52 in HotBot
...not
bad, but not great either. And when digging a little deeper to
determine the quality of those incoming links in an effort to tell
whether or not they are helping the site's relevancy we find something
lacking.
What's missing is the keyword (shortwave) from
the link descriptions.
Unlike
the two sites profiled above, The Shortwave Store site lacked
the keyword in any of the incoming links that we found. Instead, we
found banner graphic links or non-keyword text links such as...
A
comprehensive list... More Stations from Around the World
...and although the above link pointed to the URL: http://www.shortwavestore.com/shortwave-stations.html,
it did not contain the keyword shortwave anywhere in the link description.
A
better link description would have been...
Shortwave stations ...or at least, Shortwave stations from around the world
Another
example we found of an unoptimized incoming link was...
You can also order online via our secure server at our shortwave web
site. Click HERE to order.
...unoptimized
because "Click HERE" is
not a relevant keyword for the Shortwave store.
A
better incoming link would look like this...
The Shortwave Store
And...
*Worth
noting is the fact that it's not necessarily the number (volume) of
incoming links that's important; it's the quality of those incoming
links. Factors such as link relevancy (i.e.,
are relevant keywords being used to describe your links) coupled
with the link popularity of the referring site (i.e.,
Yahoo is a very popular and excellent referring site) are
factors that help determine the validity and weight of a site's incoming
links which in turn help determine a site's overall ranking.
*On
the plus side, the site focuses on a single theme and
uses the keyword in the title, description, and headline tag at the
top of the page -- all solid search engine optimization strategies.
*The
site is also no-nonsense -- without frames, Flash, JavaScript,
or dynamic content. Design simplicity is always a solid search engine
strategy.
*Most
importantly, the domain name contains the keyword which
can only help and will never hurt a site's scoring chances.
Regardless
of whatever shortcomings we've found, this site is testimony
to the satisfactory success an online store can experience in a moderately
competitive keyword arena simply by getting some of the search engine
optimization factors right. In other words, your strategies don't
have to be perfect to work well enough.
In Conclusion
Remember this important
fact: You need only to "outrun" your
competition, not the whole world. It's unlikely you'll
ever have to do everything perfect -- you only need to
outperform your competition.
Success
comes from knowing the game, analyzing your competition, and
just doing a better job than they do. And when you start solid and
plan for the long haul, you can often enjoy the luxury of letting your
work
ride while it continues to produce satisfactory results with only occasional
adjustments and minimum effort.
About the Author
Robin Nobles, Director of
Training, Academy of Web Specialists, has trained several
thousand people in her online search engine marketing
(http://www.academywebspecialists.com)
training programs. Visit the Academy's training site to
learn more about their online search engine marketing
training (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com)
and search engine optimization (http://www.se-optimizer.com)
software. She also teaches 3-day hands-on search engine marketing
workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine
Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).
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